Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Crying over spilled milk

Yesterday was a long day--not bad, just busy. I woke up and took a shower (a feat in and of itself), then cleaned the entire living room and kitchen. By the time I was done with all that, I was already ready for a nap. Unfortunately, I had a meeting at school. I left Jane with Jess (thanks, Jess) and headed to school. I spent an hour there trying to do something productive and failing miserably.

I finally gave up and went to Maceys. I bought my current favorite breakfast: a chocolate bar doughnut, a granny smith apple, and a bottle of strawberry milk. Then I drove out to the district offices in North Logan for a training on the new math program.

Let me insert here that I am not a fan of redundant trainings. Everything they told us at the meeting yesterday they already told us twice at two different meetings last June...yes, we may have forgotten some things since then, but do we really need to hear the whole thing all over again? I think not...but maybe that's just me.

The only thing I found helpful at that particular meeting was being introduced to the new teacher who I will be working with this year. His name is Ryan, he's a first year teacher, and he is the only male teacher at our school. We talked for a few minutes after the meeting and arranged to meet in my classroom later in the afternoon to talk about a few things he wanted to know.

And home again. I came home to find that Jane had taken herself to bed (she said "night night", walked up the stairs, laid down in bed, and covered up with all her blankets) and was sound asleep an hour before her usual naptime and without lunch. I was ok with that since she was going to have to wake up early to go back to school with me. Jess and I had lunch together, then I got online for a chat. It lasted for about an hour. That gave me about twenty minutes to spare before going to school...I took that chance to stop for a minute and read.

The break was good, because I had to wake up Jane. I am not an advocate of waking kids up before they're ready! Jane had slept for half an hour (she woke up shortly after I came home), ate lunch, then went back to bed. She slept for another half hour or so then woke up screaming (I'm guessing nightmare). She did go back to sleep eventually, but she never got a really good, long stretch of sleep. Basically that means she was really ornery when I woke her up. Lovely, huh?

Our meeting at school was not nearly as productive as I had hoped it would be. But we won't dwell on that...just know that I felt rather dissatisfied at the end, knowing that we'll pretty much have to redo everything we tried to do.

I hung around at school for a while after Ryan left, hanging things on the walls. I gave up on that pretty quick, though. I was reattaching a few pictures underneath the whiteboard. The tape wasn't holding up, so I was stapling them to the wall (yes, I use staples in the wall). Jane, lovely helper that she was trying to be, pulled about half of them down before I could stop her. A couple of them she pulled off and ran away with, folding them in the process. Needless to say, they don't look as nice as they did before. And I was a little annoyed.

So we gave up on school and did a little shopping. I had a few things I needed to pick up for my classroom. First stop: the Book Table. Verdict: Bad Idea. The Book Table is an excellent place for getting educational materials, but they do not have shopping carts or anything designed to restrain small children. I can only hold Jane for so long before it completely drains me of any energy I may have had, so I have to put her down. Well, we're in a store. What behavior would you expect from a toddler? After putting her down, I would then have to chase after her, replace all the merchandise she threw on the floor, then hold her for a while again until I couldn't anymore. We did that several times...I don't even know if I bought everything I needed to. I eventually gave up and left with what I had, and I haven't taken the bags out of the car yet to check what I paid for. (Hopefully it all works out anyway!)

Being a glutten for punishment, we left the Book Table and went to Walmart. I only had a few things to buy there and I knew they had carts that Jane could be securely fastened into. I managed to find only half of what I was looking for. Blah. But at least Jane couldn't touch anything...

Yeah, I was fairly exhausted when we got home in the end. But wait! I had forgotten that I was going visiting teaching. Chris had visits to do with the Elders' Quorum (he's in the presidency), so--you guessed it--Jane had to come with me. Sigh. We weren't getting along real well at this point. Luckily, she was all kinds of cuddly both with my companion and the sister we were visiting, and neither of them seemed to mind. That was good.

The best part of the day was the fact that when we got home from visiting teaching, it was time for Jane to go to bed! YAY!

I stayed up later than I should have because I was so close to the end of my book. Tannie, I finished Ella Minnow Pea. If you still want to borrow it, you're more than welcome. If you already got a copy from the library, you can let everyone else know that I have a copy available.

Everything yesterday made me really tired today. I did not want to wake up. I laid in bed for fifteen minutes listening to Jane knock on her bedroom door, wanting to come out, before I could convince myself to get up. And I gave up on that idea pretty quick, put Jane in bed with me and turned on cartoons on the tv in our room. That lasted for about an hour until I finally made it downstairs. I even got dressed first!

Jane ate breakfast, and I had a glass of milk and a bagel while sitting on the couch. I didn't drink all the milk... Jane found it... and so did the couch.

4 comments:

I was thinking the same thing about The Book Table the other day. I had our cheap stroller so I was pushing that with one hand and holding everything else with the other. My hand kept cramping and I was so distracted that I forget to get some of the stuff I went there for. Boo.

Okay, so I won't lie - you totally posted this a week ago and I didn't read it until today. :) I sent out an e-mail to the ladies of the book club letting them know that you would lend the book out. I liked reading about your day - so hard though!! I remember what it is like to have zero energy. POOH!